The Radical Women's Press of the 1850s by Cherise Kramarae Ann Russo

Author:Cherise Kramarae, Ann Russo [Cherise Kramarae, Ann Russo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781135034054
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2013-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

7

Men’s Chivalry – And all that

In the 1850s, white men had control over most of the social, economic, legal and political conditions of women’s lives. As justification, men (in their roles as clergymen, newspaper editors and writers, political leaders, husbands and fathers) encouraged women to believe that they held a special social status as wives, mothers and daughters, and that this status afforded them men’s protection and guidance. Men claimed responsibility for dictating the laws and social customs (that is, constructing and controlling the political, educational and economic institutions), and of protecting women from the public world of strife and turmoil. Women’s dependence on men was therefore supposedly in women’s best interests. Woman’s rights advocates did not accept this formulation, and in the following section, women directly challenge men’s bigoted and paternalistic views of women most strikingly evidenced in men’s responses to the women’s movement (see, for instance, “Licentious ‘Lords of Creation’”).

Strong-minded women actively criticized chivalry, the supposed altruistic bravery, courtesy and protection enacted by men for women’s benefit. They argued that chivalrous behavior was not only inconsistent and arbitrary, but also a method of keeping women subordinate. Exposing the class bias of chivalry, one writer criticizes the men who, while possibly courteous to some middle-and upper-class white women to whom they have a special interest in maintaining such a veneer, mistreat women from other social backgrounds (see “Gallantry as Class Maintenance” and “Class and Chivalry”); other writers expose the publicness of chivalry in contrast to the private abuse of women by husbands and fathers (see also section 3).

Woman’s rights advocates argued that rather than protection from the demands of public life, women needed real social and public protection from men (in public and private) in the forms of personal, social and economic independence. They directed their analysis and anger at men for creating a social and economic structure which oppresses women, and forcefully challenged masculinist logic which blames women for the conditions of women’s lives. For instance, in “Arrest the Men on the Streets, Not the Women” and “Men, Not Women, Are the Problem,” the writers challenged the double standards used against women, particularly by other women, and challenged all women to reorient their analysis and anger on men.

Women who rejected men’s “protection” and who worked for social and legal changes which would increase women’s independence were often accused of both wanting to be like men and of hating men. Faced with caricatures of woman’s rights advocates as cigar-smoking, rum-drinking, “masculine” women, a number of writers suggested that, given men’s behavior and actions, no respectable women would be interested in being like men (see “Men’s Vulgarity”). Some strong-minded women, like Amelia Bloomer, challenged critics who typically focused on women’s anger at men, suggesting they look at men’s behavior and actions as the source of the problem (see “The Lily Opposes the Men”). Many other women turned the ridicule and caricatures of women, so predominant in the male-stream press, back on men themselves (see “A Secret Revealed”), and created their

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